97 Montpelier Road (Part 2)

William Porter Knightley (1816 – 1891)

After Turrell died, Revd BW Harvey took responsibility for Western College for a couple of years to be succeeded by William Porter Knightley. Knightley had begun his career as a schoolmaster at an ‘academy‘ run by his father in Greenwich followed by a stint as Principal of Eltham Collegiate School.

The first advertisement in Knightley’s name appeared in the Times on 28th July 1866 and highlight Western College’s achievements prior to his arrival:  

© The British Library Board

The enterprise thrived, and the “young gentlemen” educated at Western College were, according to the 1871 and 1881 Censuses, aged between eight and 18, with some receiving their whole childhood education there.

An avid proponent of private schools for the middle classes, in November 1876 Knightley robustly defended them in a paper delivered to the Sussex Education Association at Brighton. He was responding to a claim by theologian and academic, Revd Mark Pattison, that such schools were so universally bad, nothing could be done to save them.  While acknowledging that a minority of private school proprietors still failed to appreciate the difference between instruction and education, Knightley asserts that this is not the norm.  On the contrary, he argues, the responsible private school schoolmaster “provides all the means and appliances of a liberal education, and devotes the best energies of heart and brain to its complete accomplishment”.

While each of Pattison’s seven key animadversions is countered in articulate detail, the contention that private schools are “the speculation of men or women without culture, without elevation of character, often without manners—men who have undertaken to teach without having learnt anything” is forthrightly dismissed:

To such a statement so made it is quite unnecessary to reply. We prefer to leave the writer in the serene atmosphere of his fancied elevation, to felicitate himself in the recollection of the withering sarcasm intended to be conveyed by these well-balanced phrases. How easy it would be to retaliate, in various directions, if we could condescend to such a course, some of us know full well, but our argument needs no such aid.

Finally, having acknowledged the immense contribution of the College of Preceptors in the 30 years since its foundation, he calls for a Union to stand up for and promote middle class private schooling specifically.  By the end of the decade this had come to pass with the foundation of the Association of Principals of Private Schools.  Known today as the Independent Schools’ Association (ISA), it is one of several organisations grouped under the umbrella of the Independent Schools Council.

Competition

By the late 1870s, however, private educational enterprises had to contend with increasing competition from endowed and government aided schools. In January 1879 Knightley railed against:

the employment of public money in the erection of school-houses and the support of schoolmasters which dealt a heavy blow and great discouragement to the spirit of private enterprise which in former times nerved the heart and warmed the heart-blood of the best teachers in the country. 

The Board Schools particularly had come a long way since the 1870 Education Act and were now offering a broader and more advanced secular curriculum for older and brighter children, a trend towards secondary education for all that was set to continue. 

Further complications

Western College, sublet to Knightley, was advertised for sale by auction early in 1881. This advertisement gives us a detailed account of the “commodious” interior of the school house as well as the layout of the extensive grounds:

Sale of Montpellier House, Brighton Herald, 2nd April 1881. © The British Library Board

Western College 1881

Yet, with the 1881 Census for Western College indicating a 22% decrease in pupil boarders over the decade, a “much improved rental” would not have been helpful for Knightley. Unsurprisingly, therefore, in the brief preface to a pamphlet showcasing the public examination results and prize winners at Western College the following year, he is at pains to emphasise the essentially liberal education offered by fee-paying schools such as his:

The stimulus supplied by the simultaneous pursuit of the same subject by different members of the Class, which is calculated to excite the mental activity of the Pupil, and to assist him in reaching the desired conclusion".

He also notes that, in the previous term of 14 weeks,  

...with an average of 40 Resident Pupils, not a single case of illness has occurred; a fact which, while it calls for gratitude to a watchful, Providential care, affords a striking satire on the malevolent representations which have been levelled with an unsparing hand against the healthiness of Brighton.

At first, this statement seems peripheral to a document predominately focusing on the scholarly ethos of Western College and the attainments of its pupils. However, it turns out that there was a sound reason for Knightley to highlight his pupils’ robust health. 

The second of half of 1881 and most of 1882 had proved distinctly uncomfortable for Brighton. In December 1881, the Bishop of Chichester had publicly voiced alarm about a “noisesome smoke cloud” he regularly observed hanging over the town.  This was followed, in February 1882, by a pamphlet with a title as assertive as it is verbose:

Warning addressed by a sanitary engineer to the ratepayers and inhabitants of Brighton with suggestions for efficient remedies to avert the increasing decline of the reputation of the town as a health resort. 

Recent months had indeed seen a rise in Brighton’s death rate, which hadn’t occurred in other large towns.  Understandably the anonymous author attributes this to “local causes” but continues, with minimal evidence, to pinpoint inadequate sewerage arrangements as the sole cause. The diatribe ends by warning that, unless it addresses its sanitation issues, Brighton is at grave risk of being dethroned as the Queen of Watering Places.

The public health genie was now out of the bottle!  The London press picked up on it and the Lancet ruthlessly and repeatedly challenged Brighton Corporation, which duly issued a writ against the journal but also sensibly engaged none other than Sir Joseph Bazalgette to survey the town’s sewage system. Bazalgette reported that, apart from a few “minor exceptions” requiring remedy, “the general condition of Brighton’s sewers is satisfactory and there are no just grounds for assuming it to be an unhealthy place”.   

This didn’t convince The Lancet so the Corporation commissioned a further report. Having worked closely with the late Dr John Snow, Dr Benjamin Ward Richardson, was an expert in sanitary science, including the microbial causes of disease. In comparing the town’s health and sanitation with his survey made 18 years previously, he was adamant that the authorities had worked relentlessly to achieve all they possibly could, given that sanitary science was still in a constant state of flux. His investigations also uncovered several “accidental and social causes” of Brighton’s high death rate over the preceding months. Notably, he concurred with the evidence-based conclusion of Brighton’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr Taafe, that outbreaks of typhoid had occurred because a dairy in Lewes Road was diluting its milk with contaminated water drawn from cisterns situated above its water closets!   

Although, like Bazalgette, Dr Richardson was clear that Brighton’s existing sewerage system had not caused the exceptional death-rates of 1881 – 1882, he did make recommendations for various modifications to the drainage and removal of waste so as "to prevent, in future, the suggestion of such cause". This was sufficient to pacify the Lancet and, in November 1882, Brighton Corporation withdrew its legal proceedings against the journal.

Interestingly, during the course of his survey, Dr Richardson examined 40 of Brighton’s larger private schools. Although the report doesn’t identify those he visited, not one was found wanting.

Bankruptcy

Pastoral care had always been Knightley’s highest priority and, in August 1885, a preparatory department for “little boys” (seven to 11 year olds), benefitting from the “personal oversight” of Knightley’s daughter (most likely this would have been Maria) was added to the College’s offerings.  Whilst it may well have been intrinsically desirable, this would appear to have been a last ditch attempt to generate urgently needed funds.  

For in December that same year, Knightley was declared bankrupt. This situation was largely due to his long-term generosity towards his only son. Walter had taken on two farms at Bolney in West Sussex several years earlier and, from the profits accrued from the flourishing first decade of Western College, his father had stocked them and funded numerous improvements – on buildings, drainage and so on. However, by the time of his unexpected death in December 1884 at the age of 35, Walter had incurred a considerable debt on one of the farms. With the country in the firm grip of an agricultural depression he was, sadly, one of many farmers in this predicament.

In an attempt to reimburse his son’s creditors, Knightley senior had kept the workers on for a further nine months.  Although he’d managed to keep Western College solvent throughout, his overall expenditure on the farms had amounted to approximately £12,000 (equivalent to over £1 million today) [FN].

Reprieve

Western College, 97 Montpelier Road, closed in 1886, ironically the year for which Knightley was appointed President of the Association of Principals of Private Schools.   Not that this was the end of the establishment: by the following year, Western College (at this stage also known as Arnold House) had put down new roots at 51 - 52 Cromwell Road, Hove.    

Here, the artist-to-be, Eric Gill (1882 - 1940) was a pupil, his father, Revd Arthur Tidman Gill, having taught at Western College Montpelier Road in the late 1870s. As a minister at Lady Huntingdon’s Chapel, North Street, Revd Gill would have needed to top up his income. Indeed, Eric testifies in his autobiography that the 11 surviving children were sometimes poorly clad and hungry. His father, he recalls, would cut one sausage into extra-thin slices to ensure each child had three or four.

Arthur Tidman Gill, in MacCarthy, Fiona (1989)

It’s unclear what subject or subjects Revd Gill had taught although drawing - which was certainly on the curriculum at Western College by 1882 - was possibly included.   He did teach art at some point in his life, and was a competent practitioner, having once said he’d rather have been a painter than a clergyman. We can perhaps deduce his teaching style, though, as Eric tells us how, at home, his father used to recite his favourite scriptural and poetic passages in such a dramatic way that his children were acutely embarrassed!

The Census of April 1891 shows Knightley in charge of a school with only a handful of boarders (although there may also have been some day boys, who wouldn’t have been recorded in the Census). Three months later, he died aged 75. The school he’d run for a quarter of a century then passed into other hands and moved again before disappearing entirely in the early years of the 20th century.

Postscript

 In 1859, William Porter Knightley was elected as a member of the London Photographic Society.  Should any of his descendants who happen upon this article know whether he pursued this interest and – even better – have any of his photos, please do get in touch.  Photos of Western College - even better!

  So far I’ve been unable to discover at which university he studied and where he attained the doctorate. Can anyone help?

Following the bankruptcy, what factors enabled Knightley to move the establishment to Hove?

First Church of Christ Scientist, 97 Montpelier Road (left); the present day Montpelier House (right). Note the standardised spelling!

Today, the First Church of Christ Scientist faces Montpelier Road on the former Montpellier House/Western College site. I am most grateful to trustee, Shirley McGrath, for granting me access to the Church’s archival material pertaining to the site and for showing me the bungaroosh walls in the basement which Dennis Saunders, a previous trustee and researcher, had flagged up as reused materials from the earlier Montpellier House.

Shirley also took it upon herself to verify that the contemporary 'Montpelier House' to the south of the Church indeed is, in accordance with the documentary evidence, constructed on the land originally purchased by Rickard for his school. Equipped with a retractable tape measure, she measured the frontage of both buildings plus the entrance to Waitrose car park, persevering despite rain and a cut to her hand when the tape measure retracted unexpectedly!

Thank you, Shirley for your unwavering enthusiasm and support.